The invention relates to a vehicle roof having a cover, which in a closed position closes a roof opening in a fixed roof surface, and which is extendable above the fixed roof surface by pivotal movement around a pivot axis extending between its lateral edges. More particularly, the invention is related to such a vehicle roof that, additionally, has a liner disposed below the cover which, during pivotal lifting of the cover, is bent around an axis disposed parallel to the pivotal axis of the cover.
In a known vehicle roof of this kind (U.S. Pat. No. 4,626,023), a sliding liner is constructed as a sandwich panel with a core layer and a lower cover layer; and the cover layer, covering at least the underside of the core layer, is compressed along with the core layer at the lateral edges of the panel to form guide members. The result is a gap in the underside of the liner that is visible from the interior of the vehicle, a result which is often deemed undesirable for reasons of aesthetics. Moreover, the manufacture of such a conventional liner is rather expensive and it is neither intended nor suitable for this known sliding liner to follow upward swinging of the roof cover by bending.
There is also known, from U.S. Pat. No. 3,960,404, a motor vehicle roof with an upwardly extendable cover having a liner that moves in unison with sliding and lifting movements of the cover. The liner has a fabric-covered liner frame consisting of three cross members which are interconnected by lateral brace elements made of spring steel bands. During upward swinging of the cover, the longitudinal brace elements are elastically deformed, to which end a relatively high spring bias has to be overcome, leading, in turn, to an undesirable increase in the torque to be created for actuation of the roof.